Children who were healthy and hearty would combat male anxieties felt over raising imagined sissified boys of the Victorian era in addition to the supposed threat of working women and suffragettes. Early camps were made for boys and meant to function as “incubators of manliness,” (ACA) and counter those symptoms that back to nature enthusiasts opposed including the “influence of public schooling and tempting decadence of urban living.” (VanSlyck)
